Fifty-two days after he was found slain in a New York hotel room, Ben Novack Jr. will finally be laid to rest in his family's mausoleum in Queens, N.Y.
Arrangements for his interment were finalized Monday, after weeks of complicated negotiations among family members, some of them as far afield as England. Services will be held 1 p.m. Wednesday.
In his will, the millionaire Fort Lauderdale convention planner asked that he and his wife, Narcy, be interred in the Novack-Spier mausoleum at Mount Lebanon Cemetery. Novack, the son of Ben Novack, founder of the legendary Fontainebleau resort in Miami Beach, has been at the Westchester County Medical Examiner's morgue since his July 12 murder.
"The exact dictates of his will will be followed,'' said the curator of his will, Douglas F. Hoffman of Fort Lauderdale.
He also stipulated that he be laid next to his wife -- and if a crypt wasn't available for both of them, he asked to be buried beside his wife in a plot near the mausoleum.
Hoffman said a crypt has been set aside for his wife.
The negotiations for his funeral were ``difficult,'' Hoffman said, explaining there was a lot of ``back and forth'' among various family members, as well extensive paperwork involved.
His transfer from the medical examiner to the funeral home will be handled ``the most humanly way possible.'' His body will be transferred from the Westchester County morgue -- where it has been on a shelf since his death -- either Monday night or Tuesday, according to Medical Examiner Millard J. Hyland.
Novack, 53, was bludgeoned to death at the Hilton Rye Town hotel in Rye Brook, N.Y. His body was found by his wife. The couple was there for a convention he had organized for Amway Global International, his company's largest client.
About 2,000 people attended the weekend convention. There are no suspects.
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